Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - North America

Canadian Banks Brand Association

2009-11-04T16:30:12Z

Internet search data can be an excellent input to understand what consumers associate with a brand name. Looking at the words that consumers include with a brand name in a search query provides insight into the products, services and attributes consumers associate wtih that brand. The data, updated weekly is far more timely and cost effective than the traditional phone surveys to measure brand association.

Today, I want to follow up on a post from last week to show what Canadians associate with the brand names of the big banks. The following table shows the top 10 branded search terms for the Big 5 banks in the twelve weeks to October 3, 2009.

It is not surprising that most consumers are searching first for online banking for all of the banks. We tend to use search engines to navigate the web and banking is no exception. There are a few other things of note, however:

- Bank of Montreal's Mastercard appears at #8 among search terms for Bank of Montreal, while credit card searches don't appear among most other bank search terms. Notice also the brand for their Mastercard product, "mosaic mastercard".
- CIBC's credit card, Visa, is also among its top 10 brand searches, again at #8.
- TD Canada Trust's search terms reveal the continued strength of the TD brand, with "td" at #2 while "canada trust" appears at #10.
- Looking beyond the top 10 terms, I found searches for TD Canada Trust Insurance offering, "rbc visa" and "desjardins visa".

You can view last week's post on the online strength of the brands of the Big 5 banks here.

Canadian Banks, Internet Search Data and Brand Strength

2009-10-15T15:41:05Z

Internet search data is an excellent source of insight into what consumers associate with a brand as well as the "top of mindedness" of any particular brand. I did some analysis of the top search terms sending visits to Canadian banks to see how Canadians search for their banks.

The top search term sending Canadian traffic to Banks and Financial Institutions in the 12 weeks rolling to October 3, 2009 was "td canada trust" accounting for 5% of clicks to this industry. A close second, searches for "rbc online banking" accounted for 4.85% of clicks.

But while TD may take the top spot in individual search terms, when I aggregated searches relating to TD Canada Trust, Royal Bank and the other big banks, I found that RBC is actually the most searched for Canadian bank, capturing 26% of branded searches among the top 300 terms sending clicks to Banks and Financial Institutions websites. TD was second capturing 20%. The following pie chart shows the breakdown for the Big 5 plus Desjardins.

All but 10 of the top 300 search terms sending visits to Banks and Financial Institutions websites were branded terms. Most generic search terms related to the Canadian dollar exchange rate and they accounted for less than 1% of clicks.

Also interesting, Capital One's URL, GetMyCard.ca was the #171 search term sending visits to Banks and Financial Institutions. The analyst team at Hitwise has done a bit of work in the past to help brand marketers use internet usage data as a measure of the effectiveness of offline advertising. This is a nice example of how awareness of a particular URL promoted in offline advertising can be measured over time and against peers.

Stay tuned for a follow up post on brand association for Canadian banks as measured by Internet search data.

TD Canada Trust Facebook

2009-10-14T14:36:14Z

As the most trafficked site in Canada, Facebook is inevitably going to appear in the clickstream reports of just about every site in Canada. However, the social network is more prominent than you might expect in clickstream reports for TD Canada Trust. TD Canada Trust had for the past couple of years built up a strong presence on the social network, and the question among many Canadian banks and online marketers is whether the effort has been worth while.

TD Canada Trust's most popular Facebook Group is Money Lounge. It was set up to provide budgeting tools and strategies for students and has amassed an impressive 19,000+ fans through contests and promotions.

Hitwise data reveal that TD Canada Trust is getting more traffic from Facebook than the other banks. Last week, the TD Canada Trust Online Banking website was the #24 downstream website from Facebook and TD Canada Trust was #26. The TD Canada Trust websites were the top commercial websites downstream from Facebook last week. Royal Bank of Canada followed at #29 and eBay Canada at #33.

Facebook is an important source of traffic to TD Canada Trust. It was the #3 source of traffic to the site last week, accounting for 6.66% of visits. Facebook accounted for more than twice the share of upstream visits to TD Canada Trust than Bing and Yahoo! Search Canada combined.

Hat tip to Shane Mullane of Hitwise for the idea for this post.

Stay tuned for more posts to come on the banking category. The next one in the hopper is on the brand strength of Canadian banks online.

Google Street View Launches in Canada

2009-10-14T14:06:55Z

Google launched Street View to 10 Canadian cities last week. Our Canadian fast moving search terms report was filled with references to Street View. The #1 fast moving search term last week was "google street view" and 4 of the top 10 fast moving search terms related to the launch.

The launch pushed up the share of Canadian internet visits to Google Maps Canada by 36% to capture 51% of Canadian internet visits among Maps websites last week. The following table shows the top 10 Maps websites in the week to 10/10/2009 based on share of Canadian internet visits.

Google launched Street View in 10 cities but Hitwise search data reveals that while demand for Street View was high for Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver some cities did not even appear among the top 100 search terms that included the words "google street view" last week, including Squamish, Whistler, Kitchener and Waterloo. However, if Google were looking for which cities to hit next, there seems to be a lot of interest in Hamilton and Sudbury.

Tylenol Recall - Parents Using Yahoo! Search?

2009-09-29T14:10:22Z

Last week's recall by Johnson & Johnson of some of its liquid Tylenol, in particular some Children's Tylenol, products has caused a stir among parents. I was not alone in searching for details of the recall online before I dashed to our medicine cabinet to see if we had any of the recalled products. It was just over two months ago that Johnson & Johnson suffered another blow to its valuable Tylenol brand, when an FDA report indicated it planned to put sweeping limits on acetaminophen (the generic name for Tylenol).

Hitwise search data reveals that searches for tylenol reached a four year high last week, far surpassing the July increase in response to the FDA report.

In doing research for this blog post, it quickly became obvious that there are some major differences in how consumers are searching for information on this recall on the different search engines. The following table shows the top 10 search terms entered into Google and Yahoo! Search last week that included the word "tylenol".

The search term "children's tylenol recall" experienced the highest volume of searches of any search term with the word "tylenol" last week. Experian Hitwise data indicate that 79% of searches for "children's tylenol recall" were performed on Yahoo! compared to 19% on Google.

As illustrated in the table above, the #1 search term that included the word "tylenol" last week on Google was "tylenol recall 2009", a term which only showed up at #9 among searches on Yahoo! Search. The #1 term on Yahoo! Search by contrast, "children's tylenol recall" only shows up at #5 on Google.com. This once again highlights that query content varies dramatically by search engine (note, we posted on how qeury content varies by engine for travel queries a few weeks ago). It serves as an important reminder that search campaigns can't just be copied from one search network to another.

Getting back to the title of this blog post, there are many possible reasons for the differences in queries across search engines. One is demographics. Perhaps parents of young children are more active users of Yahoo! Search. Another possibility is the list of suggestions the search engines offer when you search. This reminds us yet again that search campaigns need to be created and implemented individually for each major search engine.

Canadian Banks - Who Are They Competing With Online

2009-09-23T14:48:22Z

Who else do your customers bank with and to whom do they compare your offers? Hitwise clickstream data can provide useful insight into a competitive set by looking at where customers go after leaving your site. Last week, nearly half (47%) of visits to Banks and Financial Institutions websites came from other Banks and Financial Institutions websites and 58% went to other sites in the same category. These figures may seem staggering but keep in mind, part of this is traffic moving among websites of the same brand (i.e. the main home page, banking and brokerage). However, much of that is also traffic coming from and going to competitive sites.

The amount of traffic going to and from competing sites varies dramatically from bank to bank. For example, most of BMO Financial Group Online Banking's traffic goes to other BMO sites with 50% going to www.bmo.com last week. By comparison, CIBC Online Banking sends a much larger proportion of its traffic to non-CIBC websites, with only 3.7% going to CIBC Online Brokerage closely followed by TD Canada Trust Online Banking at 3.38% and RBC Online Bank at 2.6%.

I created a table of the top 10 downstream competitors from the big five banks. I used the online banking websites of the big five (online banking gets the most traffic). The downstream brands are listed, rather than individual URLs so that you can see the top 10 competing brands. In most cases, there were multiple websites for each brand (such as TD Canada Trust Online Banking and TD Waterhouse).

It is perhaps unsurprising to see TD Canada Trust at the top of the list across the board. I found it interesting that some regional differences seem to persist. In particular, notice Desjardins among the downstream brands from BMO and RBC. Other differences may be regional or may be a product of other demographic characteristics with for example, VanCity only showing up in CIBC's clickstream and HSBC only showing up in RBC's clickstream. It is also interesting that ING Direct Canada ranks ahead of BMO in downstream visits from RBC.

Who are your customers comparing your offers to? Which competitor sites are sending you the most traffic? Clickstream data can help firms better understand their competitor set.

We plan to post next week on TD Canada Trust's promotion with Facebook. Stay tuned...

Update - the post on TD Canada Trust and Facebook is now live.

Flyers the Coupons of Canada?

2009-09-09T13:55:49Z

In looking through Search Term Variation reports on Hitwise for some top Canadian retailers, I kept noticing the word "flyer" included with the brands' names. For example, a Search Term Variations report for "loblaws" puts "loblaws flyer" at #3 behind "loblaws" and "loblaws superstore" in the twelve weeks to September 5, 2009. Similarly, "canadian tire flyer" ranks at #6 among searches with "canadian tire" and "walmart flyer" ranks #5 for searches with "walmart".

The French language equivalent "circulaire" also showed up prominently in the Search Term Variations reports and in all the examples I looked at was the first specifically French language query.

The word "coupon" was noticeably less prominent than in similar reports using US data.

In the twelve weeks to September 5, 2009 Hitwise captured 505 unique search terms that included the word "flyer" in Canada. By contrast we captured 317 search terms that included the word "coupon" in Canada. In the same period in the US, we captured more than 10x as many search terms with the word "coupon" than "flyer".

Flyers aren't the same as coupons but their intent is similar. Retailers use them to promote special offers and consumers use them to look for cash savings.

This example highlights how important flyers are for Canadian promotional efforts. Search data can be a goldmine for foreign brands looking to enter a new market to understand the language consumers use and their priorities. It can also be a goldmine for domestic brands looking for ideas on how to reach consumers in this weak economy.

Below is a list of the top 10 search terms that included the word "flyer" in Canada in the past twelve weeks.

Bing Leads in Successful Canadian Searches

2009-09-02T13:34:42Z

A couple of weeks ago we posted data on the success rate of Canadian searches, noting in particular that only 30% of Canadian Internet searches are "successful". A couple of readers asked us to share success rate by search engine. The following chart shows the success rate of the top 10 search engines in Canada in the twelve weeks to August 29, 2009. Note that Bing enjoyed the highest success rate among these leading search engines, with a 78.74% success rate, closely followed by Yahoo! Search Canada at 77.45%.

Hitwise Canada: Top 10 Search Engines (by share of searches). Twelve weeks to August 28, 2009

Hitwise defines a successful search as one where the consumer leaves the search engine after performing a search. As Matt McGee of Search Engine Land points out Bing.com beat out the Canadian specific search engines of Google and Yahoo! as well as the international (dot com) domains.

Once again, the relatively low success rate of Canadian searches offers an obvious opportunity for search engines to improve relevance but also provides search marketers an opportunity to use geo-targeting to ensure Canadian searchers are being presented with Canadian websites in search results.

Addendum

Thanks to those who commented on this post, challenging our definition of success rate. First, let me clarify our definition of success rate. A successful search occurs when a user, after having conducted a search goes on to visit a downstream website other than a search engine, within a specific time period. We also wanted to provide some additional data and analysis to address some of the concerns raised. You are right, for some searches, the goal isn’t to leave the search engine. However, let’s dig into the data a bit further to understand what’s really going on.

The highest volume searches are for brand names. For these high volume searches, consumers are essentially using the search engine as a navigational aid. For example, the top searches in Canada in the past twelve weeks were “facebook”, “youtube”, “facebook login” and “facebook.com”. While the overall numbers I provided in my post are a useful benchmark, it is perhaps more helpful to look at success rate by search engine for some individual keywords. For those four highest volume keywords, Bing enjoys a higher success rate for all of them. Same goes for searches for “ebay”, “canadian tire”, “air canada”, “walmart canada” and “kijiji edmonton”. There certainly are navigational terms for which Google leads Bing, such as “walmart” and “westjet”.

For the majority of the high volume navigational search terms I looked at, Bing beats out Google on the measure of moving people off of the search engine and over to the retailers’ websites. With commercial searches it makes sense to think of searches that leave the search engine to visit another site as being “successful”.

While navigational terms see the highest volumes, I also looked at some of the more common generic (or non-branded) terms. Google faired better than Bing on many of these searches. For example, on searches for “free online games”, Google enjoyed an 86.51% Success Rate compared to Bing’s 85.13% and for “jeux” (French for “games”), Google enjoyed an 89.02% Success Rate to Bing’s 81.27%. However, Bing led Google on “games” and “horoscope”.

These are only the highest volume terms and don’t take into account low volume searches for things such as phone numbers, conversions (currency, volume, etc.), or translation. However, this does help further explain how we arrived at the figures we published earlier this week showing that Bing enjoys the highest success rate among the major search engines.

I welcome additional suggestions and comments.

Flight Searches Vary Dramatically by Engine

2009-08-19T21:59:14Z

We often hear about how search engines compare in market share of searches or relevance of search results but what about query content? Analysis of query content for the travel category reveals that the search terms consumers use on the leading search engines (Google.com, Bing.com and Search.Yahoo.com) vary greatly.

Take for example the following Hitwise Search Term Variations report for the words "flights to". This report shows all of the different search terms that consumers entered into search engines last week that included the keywords "flights to".

When we filter that report by Search Engine, we can see dramatic differences in the "flights to" queries performed on the different engines. For example, as the following table illustrates, Florida figures prominently among Google users, with "flights to Florida" and "cheap flights to Florida" ranking #1 and #2 among Google searches that include the words "flights to". A Florida related query doesn't appear until #14 on Yahoo! Search. On Bing.com, a search for flights to Orlando comes in at #4, but the word Florida isn't included in a "flights to" query until #59.

Similar differences are evident in hotel related searches. A report on search terms that include the word "hotel" (filtered to include only destination related searches rather than brand names) puts Las Vegas, Virginia Beach, Myrtle Beach and Atlantic City at the top of Google hotel searches. Among Bing users, New York comes in at #2.

One reason for these differences might be the suggestions the search engines offer as one types in a query. It is important for search marketers to tailor search campaigns by search engine to reflect these differences in query content.

Only 70% of Canadian Searches are Successful

2009-08-18T22:43:16Z

Hitwise analysis included in the forthcoming Hitwise Canada Search Report reveals that nearly one third (30%) of Canadian Internet searches are not successful - forcing Canadians to re-search to find relevant results. An average of 70% of searches in Canada were “successful” in the twelve weeks to June 27, 2009 (average of all search engines). A successful search is defined as one where the consumer leaves the search engine after performing a search. This means that 30% of searchers were forced to conduct a fresh search, no doubt partially motivated by search results that failed to return a useful result.

Hitwise analysis of success rates for various search terms indicate that the problem may be a result of international results appearing in the search engine results, forcing Canadians to re-search, adding the qualifier "Canada" to the query.

For example, as the following table reveals, for the search term “wedding dresses” the success rate is much higher on searches that include the word “canada” in the query. While the success rate for searches for “wedding dresses” is 84%, it is 100% “wedding dresses canada”.

Searches for brand terms are particularly prone to a have a higher success rate with the word “canada” included in the search:
• The success rate for searches for “walmart” was 88.83% while for “walmart canada” it was 92.54%.
• The success rate for searches for “home depot” was 84.25% while for “home depot canada” it was 92.33%.

This provides an obvious opportunity for search engines to improve relevancy of results but also provides an opportunity to marketers to attract customers through paid search engine listings. In particular, brand marketers could take the very basic step of bidding on the brand term to ensure that the relevant website is at the top of the search engine results page.

Click here to request a complimentary copy of the Hitwise Canada Search report.

Update: I posted the success rate by engine here. Thanks.

Facebook and Friendfeed Stats on the Union

2009-08-14T21:40:48Z

Following this week's 's announcement that Facebook will acquire Friendfeed, we wanted to share a few stats from the US (Robin posted UK stats earlier this week). First, let's put the size of the two sites in context. Facebook ranked #2 among All Categories of websites last week (behind Google) and was #1 among Social Networks and Forums. Friendfeed by contrast ranked #9010 among All Categories and #421 among Social Networks and Forums.

The deal is being hailed as a breakthrough for Facebook in the battle against Google as the acquisition provides it with a leader in real-time search. Analysis of Friendfeed's clickstream data reveals that content sites are popular among Friendfeed users. Last week, 22% of downstream visits from Friendfeed went to Social Networks and Forums, 18% to Entertainment, 9% to News and Media, 8% to Search Engines, and 7% to Business and Finance.

A comparison with Google and Twitter's downstream traffic reveals, as one might expect, that Friendfeed's clickstream profile is much more similar to Twitter than to Google. Social Networks, Entertainment, News and Media, Search Engines, and Lifestyle websites are popular among downtream categories for both Twitter and Friendfeed. Google's traffic is more concentrated to Shopping & Classifieds, Business and Finance and Education (Wikipedia in particular).

Friendfeed is currently receiving much more traffic from Facebook than it sends back. Last week, the top referrer of visits to Friedfeed was Google, accounting for 21.03% of upstream visits followed by Facebook with 9.60% of visits. Looking downstream, Facebook ranked #4, receiving only 4.69% of Friendfeed's downstream visits, behind Twitter, Google and Picassa Web Albums.

The last thing I want to mention is the DMA of visitors to Facebook and Friendfeed. Interestingly, while Facebook draws its strength from major urban centers (NY, LA, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston), Friendfeed, draws its strength from LA and smaller urban centers. LA accounts for 29% of the site's visits in the past four weeks and the next most highly ranked DMA were Raleigh, Santa Barbara and San Diego.

We look forward to watching this story develop.

Kelowna Fires Spur Visits to Local News Websites

2009-08-05T21:19:21Z

There is much debate about the need for and business model for local news providers. In looking at Hitwise Canada data on where Canadians have been turning for news of the forest fires in Kelowna BC, I noticed that Castanet.net, a local news website has served as a hub for BC residents looking for details of the fires and evacuations.

The top search term used to find information on the blazes is "kelowna fires". The first week the fires burned (week to July 25, 2009) searches for "kelowna fires" accounted for just under 1 in every 400 Canadian internet searches sending vistis to News and Media websites.

Canadians as a whole turned to Google News Canada, Castanet.net, BC Local News, CBC News and other local news websites for up to date information. The increase in visits to Castanet.net pushed it to rank #17 among News and Media websites in the week ending July 25, 2009, up from 30th the previous week.

Looking more closely at Hitwise Demographics data, it appears that local BC residents relied on Castanet far more heavily than did Canadians from other provinces. Hitwise demographic data reveals that among BC residents, the top visited News and Media websites in the 12 weeks ending July 25, 2009 were Weather Network, Castanet, Yahoo! News Canada, Google News Canada and CBC News. While Canadians as a whole turned to Google News first and then to local news, BC residents went straight to local sources, in paricular Castanet.net. This indicates that Canadians seeking general information on the fires turned to Google News while locals who needed detailed information on evacuations and the fire's progres turned to the local news website for details.

Some may lament the death of local news, but at least the residents of Kelowna BC seem to know where to turn for local coverage.

Canadian Cheapskate Travellers

2009-07-23T14:00:23Z

It seems we Canadians are cheapskates when it comes to travel. The qualifier "cheap" is a popular one to include in searches in all of the markets we monitor. In Canada, there were 1,746 different search terms that included the word "cheap" in the twelve weeks to June 27, 2009. Looking at that list of search term variations, travel terms dominate the list.

The following table shows the top ten Canadian search terms that included the word "cheap" in the twelve weeks to June 27, 2009.

Notice that 9 of these top 10 terms are travel related with "cheap flights" and "cheap tickets" appearing at the top of the list.

The Hitwise Search Term Variations report shows us the industries that consumers visit after searches that include the word "cheap". In the twelve weeks to June 27, 47% went to Travel websites with the lion's share going to Travel Agencies. Only 4.36% went to Shopping and Classifieds websites. This is quite different from what we see in the US. While Travel is also the top downstream industry after queries that include the word "cheap", only 27.71% of of US visits went to Travel websites with 11.23% going to Shopping and Classifieds.

This data indicate that Canadians, while keen to travel, are sensitive to budgets. This insight can help Travel marketers tailor offers and campaigns. Understanding the qualifiers that consumers are using to find content relevant to your business can help tailor search engine marketing campaigns (by including relevant keywords in ads) and website content (to improve conversion rates and improve search engine optimisation).

Tylenol Scare: Review of Online Response

2009-07-21T13:43:21Z

Johnson & Johnson's rapid response to an FDA panel's recommendation a couple of weeks ago of sweeping limits on acetaminophen (the generic name for Tylenol) has been widely reported. Most of the coverage has focused on offline advertising, particularly ads in USA Today. We wanted to take a look at how Johnson & Johnson responded online to protect its extremely valuable brand.

Searches for "tylenol" increased 50% in the week to July 4, 2009 (the FDA issued it's recommendation on the 1st). The following table lists the top search terms consumers entered into search engines in the week to July 4 that included the word "tylenol". The table clearly illustrates that consumers were looking to find out more about the safety of Tylenol and the FDA's recommendation.

After performing the above searches, consumers visited Health & Medical websites (19%) and News and Media websites (9%). For the individual term "tylenol" consumers visited Google News (28%) and Tylenol.com (22%).

Tylenol quickly responded to the FDA's recommendation by acting to assuage consumer fears, and they did this right at the source consumers were turning to for more information: search engines. Tylenol changed the message on its paid search listings to spread the word that Tylenol is safe. The paid search ad allowed Johnson and Johnson to appear at the top of the search engine results page, ahead of results for news organizations, blogs, and sites attacking Tylenol. The screen shot below shows one of the ads Johnson and Johnson ran.

Paid search is a perfect mechanism to quickly respond to a potential threat to a brand. Whether consumers click on your link or not is not as important as getting your message across. J&J's ad is also subtle enough that it is unlikely to stir up more panic.

Google Real Estate

2009-07-07T13:26:37Z

Google has entered the real estate listings business by allowing users to find property listings on Google Maps. Searchers are still offered the usual business listings but are now also offered the option to see property listings as well. The listings include some basic filtering and the ability to save and share the results.

What will be the impact of this change on the Real Estate category? It's hard to say but the following data and analysis offers some clues.

Hitwise data reveal that last week, Google Maps sent 2% of its US traffic to websites in the Real Estate industry, making it the #19 downstream industry (among more than 160). Yahoo! Real Estate, Realtor.com and Trulia all accounted for a larger volume of traffic to real estate listings than did Google Maps.

A Google product manager told The Age that real estate queries are increasing on Google. Hitwise data indicate that the share of visits Real Estate websites receive from Google Maps has increased 68% year over year to June 2009. But Google Maps is tiny compared to the 100 pound gorilla, Google.com. Google.com accounted for 24%, or nearly one in four visits to Real Estate websites in June, up 18% year over year in June.

The real question for Real Estate websites is whether (and when) property listings will be included in the search engine results page on Google.com.

Hitwise US: Top 10 Real Estate Websites, Week to July 4, 2009